"Is There Poetry Past Forty”
If you’re a poet at 20, it’s because you’re 20; if you’re a poet at 40, it’s because you’re a poet. Joel Oppenheimer
At 6 a.m. I punch out and head home.
At ten below boots quack over new snow.
I stop under a street light to admire
the meteorological phenomena I heard
described on the news – ice crystals
in the air make light appear to shine up.
Passing 40 one is attentive to reversals,
no time to hide light under a bushel,
no time to be afraid of the shadow
who lives in a cyst under your heart
where cells with no replacements go.
I fight to keep from drifting out past
ritual where habit practices a haughty tremor
and doggerel thumps out each year
rhyming all the tales old wives tell –
whiskers, humpback, a thickening.
St. Francis presides over the parking lot,
his outspread hands filled with snow.
The light flies up from him.
Even old wives know there is more
than time clocks, money, the cold walk home.
Light a candle or curse the dark.
It’s a measure of the grace
we take our grain of salt with.